Let Her Go
by Cezille07
Summary: It was perfect. Their love had been more intense than whatever anyone had anticipated. Perhaps too much. Trying to be strong, Ferb resolves to set her free, knowing it was her happiness as much as it was his death sentence. ONESHOT.


A/N: I've had this idea lying around for a few months, and bit by bit the sentences just wrote themselves, with no clue how they would bind together in the end. I hope the result is readable, that at least it evokes something in the readers. This is more exposition than events, and in that respect I think there's another Ferbnessa story I wrote better. However the judgment is with you, dear reader. xD

Warnings: Kinda OOC for Ferb. Alcohol consumption, some morbidness, some swearing.

Disclaimer: "Phineas and Ferb", and all related characters and trademarks, was created by Jeff Swampy Marsh and Dan Povenmire, and belong to Disney.

~o0O0o~

**Let Her Go**

I stood in the doorway, holding myself steady and willing the drops of remorse not to fall from my eyes. She had one suitcase finished; from my side of the room, clothes seemed to stream out from the closet, and I glimpsed the memory behind each of those dresses she (seldom) wore. Her high school prom, then mine; the first date with her parents, and the first date without. I wasn't supposed to kiss her until we were married, so warned her father, but she pulled me in during a movie date once, and her hands had never left mine since.

Everyone had always said she was too old for me. Six years before I was born, she was already out in the world making her first friends and learning and being perfectly charming in her own defiant way. They warned me her father was an insane old coot in a lab coat, they warned me she had just left some punk-rock boy who cared none for her outside his music. They warned me she was as fragile as she was charming.

But the moment a ray of her white sunshine on me, it could not be helped. Me, my restraint, my diligence—everything in my world shattered as I struggled to keep her for myself only.

And I fought for her. Less than valiantly. I didn't know how weak I was until her love teased me, until her simple insights challenged my own, and made me a better, stronger person. I was a man of action, with less words and more silent hand-holding when she needed. Or less. Theoretically, I knew everything I should know. I was just too slow to act, I suppose. When the lights went out and I closed the book on advanced quantum relativity, she lay beside me sleeping soundly, in a world I could not fathom: of music, of dance, of the profound verses in her untamed heart. She sought adventure, a new meaning to the sunrise every day, challenging the value of time and planting strange (but never senseless) ideas into my head. She wanted more than knowledge. She wanted things unlike her parents and society had framed out for her. It was a spark like Phineas', when, arms entangled, we drew from the springs in each other's eyes. She was so beautiful, because she glowed from the inside.

Now I held my tears, my guts overcome by violent seizures; my chest was bound to explode with apologies and that childish whine I banished years ago the moment she finally said "I love you too" and I realized life was really very kind to me. Her silky hair was rather unkempt, and her eyes were dim with the frustration of our cyclic disagreements. In my mind, the only question was "Why"? This relationship everything I had built my life around. WHY? Why, after all this time? Why now? Since when did we change? How COULD we change, after all those promises, after the endless nights of talking, staring at the stars, talk of equations and plans for tomorrow? How COULD her heart stop beating? Why couldn't I kiss that smile back into her cheerless lips? (Was it that other person..? How—I dared not venture to ask...)

Yet I couldn't hold her back now. I said I wouldn't let her go. I said it would be she who would end the relationship, if it ever did. I somehow anticipated that, since this was too good to be true, she would take those hollow words to heart. She was leaving. Maybe for good. It wouldn't be the first time she tried. However, then was the last time I'd stop her. Her crying on the other side of the bed, thinking I was asleep, was too much. Her looking more distraught in my presence than at the her father's laboratory, was the puncturing blow to the tin shield I held up over my fragile chest, where my broken heart sat nursing itself. Maybe because I had been selfish, and needy, and rather obsessed to boot.

I was ready to storm the nearest pub and drain their beer resources for the week tonight. I was ready to cry. But to beg was to continue trapping her in the very mechanism that caused her so much pain. This is me trying to be strong. I'd lie about being okay with it until she drove into the heart of the city back to her mother's flat. And then I'd...

"Uhm, I don't know what to say," she said suddenly, half-facing me, a dark, timid look in her eyes.

Frankly I didn't either. I had never been much of a talker. But if I spoke now, I might change her mind. And hurt her even more. I couldn't take _that_. If anyone was going to be hurt, let it be me. Let it be me who has to swallow the bitter asides from people who expected me to _really_ love her, forever. But I do. I will. Precisely why...I blinked back the next gallon of "should-have's" and drew out a passive, "Good bye. That's all, I think."

She cocked her head discerningly. Stooping to pick up her bags, she cast me a side glance, perhaps, like me, wondering if this was the right thing to do. Then she slowly toddled past me, out of the bedroom, out of our home. Out of my life.

~o0O0o~

I was too drunk to keep drinking, but I would have kept going until my blood was infused with too much alcohol. I had started drinking at one of her birthday parties. She, being older than me, was used to the liquor coursing in her veins, numbing her senses. Until now, I had never quite learned to keep down liquor. So the seats beside mine were empty, and a bucket of sick was half-filled by the time midday found me sulking.

I always thought our love was perfect. So perfect, almost too good to be true. Such that the moment she decided to walk away, I knew I was going to go back to my secluded self, lurking in the corner shadows of her life, if I could work up the courage to not kill myself in the process. Maybe this just happens, I tried to tell myself, because it was on television all the time, because novels overly-dramatized this sort of thing. Then again, when had I been normal? Growing up with Phineas proved that nature couldn't even conform to me. And maybe the norm wasn't applicable? I had no idea. I should probably just go home and sleep for a week, and see where that takes me. Out of a job, definitely. The mayor would instantly pull back its support of my engineering talent. If Vanessa could lose her faith in me then so can the Tri-State Area.

Then I just saw her. Strolling absently past the pub window. She was wearing a lacy pink blouse, her face passive and her mind thousands of miles ahead of her. Damn. Now all that beer lost its effect. I signalled for the bartender to bring me another round of their finest.

I looked back, if only to rub in the wounds of losing her.

She had stopped at a corner and found a bench with another occupant. Male, tanned skin, scruffy, shoulder-length hair with an untidy magenta streak down the right side of his face.

Then Vanessa smiled.

My heart was crushed again, the hideous pieces further ground into smaller crystals than volcanic ash.

She smiled.

With someone else.

With the man whose name I repressed into the corner of my mind with the childhood monsters, with the memories of Lawrence leaving the mother I never knew, with the last screws Phineas left before getting married with Isabella and moving away to Paris.

But she was laughing.

I looked back at my mug, now refilled with frothy beer. Then I looked back at Vanessa. She was a reflection of the carefree sixteen-year-old lady I fell so deeply in love with. She was...happy.

I bathed my face in that last mug of beer and cussed under my breath. She was happy...

And that...was all the reason I needed not to return home, to the kitchen knife I had sharpened meticulously the night before.


End file.
